WebGoat: A deliberately insecure Web Application

Introduction

WebGoat is a deliberately insecure web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons.

This program is a demonstration of common server-side application flaws. The exercises are intended to be used by people to learn about application security and penetration testing techniques.

WARNING 1: While running this program your machine will be extremely vulnerable to attack. You should disconnect from the Internet while using this program. WebGoat's default configuration binds to localhost to minimize the exposure.

WARNING 2: This program is for educational purposes only. If you attempt these techniques without authorization, you are very likely to get caught. If you are caught engaging in unauthorized hacking, most companies will fire you. Claiming that you were doing security research will not work as that is the first thing that all hackers claim.

Installation instructions:

For more details check the Contribution guide

1. Run using Docker

Already have a browser and ZAP and/or Burp installed on your machine in this case you can run the WebGoat image directly using Docker.

Every release is also published on DockerHub.

docker run -it -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 webgoat/webgoat

For some lessons you need the container run in the same timezone. For this you can set the TZ environment variable. E.g.

docker run -it -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 -e TZ=America/Boise webgoat/webgoat

If you want to use OWASP ZAP or another proxy, you can no longer use 127.0.0.1 or localhost. but you can use custom host entries. For example:

127.0.0.1 www.webgoat.local www.webwolf.local

Then you can run the container with:

docker run -it -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 -e WEBGOAT_HOST=www.webgoat.local -e WEBWOLF_HOST=www.webwolf.local -e TZ=America/Boise webgoat/webgoat

Then visit http://www.webgoat.local:8080/WebGoat/ and http://www.webwolf.local:9090/WebWolf/

2. Run using Docker with complete Linux Desktop

Instead of installing tools locally we have a complete Docker image based on running a desktop in your browser. This way you only have to run a Docker image which will give you the best user experience.

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 webgoat/webgoat-desktop

3. Standalone

Download the latest WebGoat release from https://github.com/WebGoat/WebGoat/releases

export TZ=Europe/Amsterdam # or your timezone
java -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -jar webgoat-2023.5.jar

Click the link in the log to start WebGoat.

4. Run from the sources

Prerequisites:

• Java 17 or 21
• Your favorite IDE
• Git, or Git support in your IDE

Open a command shell/window:

git clone git@github.com:WebGoat/WebGoat.git

Now let's start by compiling the project.

cd WebGoat
git checkout <<branch_name>>
# On Linux/Mac:
./mvnw clean install

# On Windows:
./mvnw.cmd clean install

# Using docker or podman, you can than build the container locally
docker build -f Dockerfile . -t webgoat/webgoat

Now we are ready to run the project. WebGoat is using Spring Boot.

# On Linux/Mac:
./mvnw spring-boot:run
# On Windows:
./mvnw.cmd spring-boot:run

... you should be running WebGoat on http://localhost:8080/WebGoat momentarily.

Note: The above link will redirect you to login page if you are not logged in. LogIn/Create account to proceed.

To change the IP address add the following variable to the WebGoat/webgoat-container/src/main/resources/application.properties file:

server.address=x.x.x.x

4. Run with custom menu

For specialist only. There is a way to set up WebGoat with a personalized menu. You can leave out some menu categories or individual lessons by setting certain environment variables.

For instance running as a jar on a Linux/macOS it will look like this:

export TZ=Europe/Amsterdam # or your timezone
export EXCLUDE_CATEGORIES="CLIENT_SIDE,GENERAL,CHALLENGE"
export EXCLUDE_LESSONS="SqlInjectionAdvanced,SqlInjectionMitigations"
java -jar target/webgoat-2023.6-SNAPSHOT.jar

Or in a docker run it would (once this version is pushed into docker hub) look like this:

docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 -e EXCLUDE_CATEGORIES="CLIENT_SIDE,GENERAL,CHALLENGE" -e EXCLUDE_LESSONS="SqlInjectionAdvanced,SqlInjectionMitigations" webgoat/webgoat